Part 100: Whistleblowers are Not Protected – Retaliation and Perception at USC

Published July 13, 2024

Jul 13, 2024

Photo of Dr. Carol L. Folt being bestowed the Presidential Medallion of Office from Wanda Austin, PhD the former interim president of USC, during Folt’s inauguration as USC’s 12th president in 2019. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

“WHISTLEBLOWERS ARE PROTECTED” - The underscored, bolded text on the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement poster in the kitchen/copy room in the Bovard Administration Building at the University of Southern California. Nothing could be further from the truth. Despite five major scandals in five years at the troubled university, things still aren’t right. Even the embattled senior administration's newly released “Culture Journey” survey results agree: “40% of all respondents disagreed with the idea that university leadership accepts responsibility for their actions,” according to USC Annenberg Media.

Last semester, while pushing for more coverage of USC’s heinously broken Title IX system, the nation’s fundamental gender equity law, the university blocked my personal email account after complaining about the case of a prospective student that had dragged on for more than two years. USC’s Title IX coordinator, Catherine Spear, is now in charge of administering civil rights for the entire University of California System. This major hire is despite Spear releasing exactly zero of the annual reports promised by her own policy and as required by USC’s Resolution Agreement with the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, signed in February 2020. As late as March, her boss, Senior Vice President Felicia Washington, promised the Daily Trojan: “We are looking forward to providing the community with information, and there’s a part of me that wants to say, ‘Stay tuned,’ because I think it will be exciting.”

The news article announcing Washington’s departure in the Daily Trojan subhead lines: “Washington oversaw the University’s human resources department after ex-gynecologist George Tyndall’s assaults came to light.” It doesn’t mention that Tyndall died awaiting a criminal trial that never happened more than five and a half years after the Los Angeles Times exposed generational sexual abuse and harassment at the campus student health center.

The way I’ll forever remember Washington is glaring at me in the hallway of Bovard after leaving the President’s Office, coming through the security doors with a knowing shake of the head that I had gotten her in trouble with the Feds. Even as they lied to me in writing, denying that anything was amiss, for a brief moment, they held USC President Carol Folt and her to account.

After returning to campus following the pandemic, USC had failed on multiple accounts to make the changes it had promised to victims, and according to three former counselors from the embattled campus Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention Services, the university has sought to backtrack on even those obligations just about as quickly as it can. No one knows what goes on in Title IX because it’s secret. After students made a documentary about the scandal, “Breach of Trust,” according to the new podcast series “Fallen Angels: A Story of California Corruption” from LA Times investigative reporter, Paul Pringle, USC retaliated against a faculty member with a long investigation for cursing in the short film. This was the icing on the proverbial cake; Tyndall had persisted despite reports being made to USC’s Office of General Counsel, Office of Equity and Diversity, and Human Resources.

Other than some rebranding, very little changed with the arrival of President Carol Folt following the departures of President Max Nikias and later Provost Michael Quick. The executives responsible for the failure to check Tyndall were simply either soft-exited from the university or otherwise even promoted. This included the two HR officials for the Student Health Center, which my supervisor, Vice Provost for Academic Operations Dr. Mark Todd, directly oversaw. In my first meeting with OCR in May 2020, we discussed this dynamic, why HR had failed whistleblower nurse Cindy Gilbert so badly that they even retaliated against her by revoking a promotion.

I told OCR that they had done something similar to another employee for speaking out against USC’s mandatory arbitration agreement, which forces those with claims against the university into a process that many have suggested is stacked against them. OCR’s investigation had closed, they refused to re-open it under any terms: and to date, it’s the only investigation into Tyndall that’s available to the public.

Despite the promise of “safety and transparency” from Chairman Rick Caruso and an independent investigation report, that may or may not exist. The report was ordered to be created by the national legal firm O’Melveny & Myers with attorneys Steve Olson and Apalla Chopra. Both still work for the firm, and Caruso maintains that releasing this document in whatever form it exists would result in re-traumatizing the victims. Chopra’s webpage details that, “In addition, Apalla is among a handful of lawyers colleges and universities turn to for their most complex and high profile legal challenges, including Title IX and Clery Act investigations and follow-on litigation into their handling of sexual assault allegations.” USC isn’t named. On Olson’s page, it’s simply slipped in as being among those whom he services for “high-profile investigations involving allegations of financial fraud and misconduct.”

No one is denying that there’s a necessary place for attorneys in the world. But as Pringle’s podcast notes, Caruso would later claim in deposition with the attorneys for Tyndall’s victims that it was the university’s lawyers who had directed him not to release the report. So what’s in that document? I can still remember that Chopra and Olson did, in fact, conduct an investigation at USC in the wake of the Tyndall scandal. They collected documents, and they did interviews. Caruso would describe their work product as a “board presentation,” and even student journalists have demanded that Caruso “Show USC some love…Treat us like you would your own daughter and share results of the Tyndall investigation,” he’s resisted even as rumors fly that he’ll again seek to be Mayor of Los Angeles or even Governor of the State of California.

I’m still coming to terms with what living through this period at USC meant to me. The Carmen Puliafito scandal had come and gone with our efforts to rug sweep the matter into one that wasn’t so much a crisis of leadership as a failure to conduct oversight of “Bad Doctors” as Pringle’s 8^th episode is entitled. Puliafito wasn’t just a doctor though; he was a Dean in charge of the behemoth Keck School of Medicine, and he terrorized his own employees by ranting angrily in his methamphetamine and heroin induced rages. Despite that, some still loved him, including top officials at USC; they allowed him to stay, and no one spoke against him until the news came close and Provost Michael Quick moved to terminate Puliafito. That morning, Puliafito was a sad sack, and after being terminated, he came into my office to request a meeting, which he got. The sheepish smile on his face revealed full guilt; he was done at USC.

I never met or heard of George Tyndall, despite my liminal involvement in the faculty discipline process and in legal matters otherwise. The $200,000 settlement that he received from USC undoubtedly went in the stack of agreements we routinely ran from the USC Office of General Counsel to the Provost’s Office for approval, a massive operation in hardcopy to keep the university moving and to make sure every department and faculty member got what they wanted, including OGC as it was known. Quick told as much in his “Letter to Colleagues” dated May 21, 2018, saying: “While it is difficult to accept, as settlements never sound appropriate, the reality is, given our size, structure, and due process policies, it is often the most expedient way to remove someone from the university.” This was the icing on the cake for me in mentally breaking from my colleagues. I had been equally shocked that USC simply took the results of its internal Task Force on Workplace Standards and Employee Wellness that had sought to address the Puliafito scandal and sought to present them as an immediate response to Tyndall.

The audacity of USC was nothing new. We were a behemoth, engaged in a massive fundraising endeavor, the “Campaign for USC” that sought $6 billion dollars, which was later raised to a goal of $8 billion dollars after meeting its goal. As time passed, for so many, the sting of these first two scandals lessened. Puliafito had been a dramatic case; Tyndall had been an unfortunate nightmare episode, not soon to be forgotten. Like so many others, I had a deep love for President Max Nikias, who with his strong Greek accent, once welcomed me into the Presidential mansion in San Marino alongside his wife for stately dinners in support of funding for community outreach programs. Max and Michael were hurt to their cores by the community response, and particularly by the faculty outrage; and I can still see Gilbert’s face meeting directly opposite Quick’s lean visage through the Bovard window. The Provost was the head of the faculty.

It was our instructors who were essential to providing the educational product that underlies an increasingly expensive diploma. I knew Max would have to resign. No one wanted to hear it until it happened after Caruso and some faculty pressured him.

As part of USC’s standard procedures, President Carol Folt was hired by a faculty search committee in close cooperation with a recruiting firm, after a thorough search process involving members of the community for input. Beginning in July 2019, with the standard pomp and circumstance, presumably, Caruso approved of the hire. It’s unknown if any other candidates were even interviewed. When she first arrived, we were invited back into the President’s Office for coffee and donuts. My first conversation with Carol Folt was illusory. She could tell that I wasn’t happy with the situation. We talked about how USC would benefit from a native plant program. I was optimistic that Folt, an expert in salmon populations, would be receptive.

She was skeptical of me right off the bat, but we quickly smoothed it over, saying that USC would have to regrow from its sufferings over those painful episodes. On the backburner were two other scandals: the Mark Ridley-Thomas bribery scandal and Operation Varsity Blues, the college admissions scandals. Those cut at the heart of USC’s pay-to-play environment, something I had cautioned my supervisor from engaging in. So when the email sent to him from Dean Marilyn Flynn of the School of Social Work in which she promised to do the same for Ridley-Thomas as she had done for Karen Bass, it was highly disappointing.

I had told Dr. Todd several times to be wary of engaging in questionable business practices on behalf of the university. I had been hired in October 2015 following my graduate studies at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. The senior administration at the time was like a community. Each executive had dedicated, trusted assistant(s) with a multitude of titles and ranks. It was pomp and circumstance to the maximum. Chief among them was Vice President for Admissions and Planning Kathrine Harrington, a respectable woman of learning, if there ever was one, responsible for overseeing the critical process that matriculates students into the educational institution. Katherine could tell I was getting tired. It was approximately one week before the U.S. Attorney’s Office broke the story, handing down indictments against wealthy parents and a select few university officials. I told Katherine of my sorrow, and she whispered to me that sometimes going along with it was simply “the price of admission.” I told her that I feared the next scandal would involve the admissions process.

It was an eerie moment when the news broke. I devoured the indictment. I couldn’t understand how Athletic Director Pat Haden hadn’t been charged despite the clear involvement of his subordinates. In fact, I had even seen Rick Singer, the mastermind of this duplicity, waiting for Haden one day as he exited Nikias’s office briefcase in hand, not looking so happy to see Singer. My supervisor told me that I was reaching, that Singer had simply sought Haden, and that Haden wanted none of it, even as questions swirled around Haden’s involvement in a nonprofit and his self-enrichment. Had USC secretly condoned the scheming? Was President Nikias in on it? The questions swirled; I wasn’t so sure, and to date, despite numerous prosecutions and ultimately a relative slap on the wrist for Singer after he setup others on behalf of the FBI, we don’t really have the answers. That was small-ball compared to the Ridley-Thomas affair, which, despite being exposed in August 2018 by the same Los Angeles Times team of Matt Hamilton and Harriet Ryan, ultimately meant far more to the city and took far longer to resolve.

Ridley-Thomas remains free on bail. The latest filing from his attorneys on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, dated June 28, 2024, asserts that the legendary African-American politician “makes clear that the government’s “monetization” theory, which told jurors that receipt of a gratuity was “still bribery” (23-ER-4491), was legally invalid as to all counts.” I don’t buy Ridley-Thomas’s claims of innocence. After my colleague at the School of Social Work Dean’s Office bravely reported Dean Marilyn Flynn’s dealings to USC’s Office of Compliance, my supervisor did an about face and worked with Provost Quick and ultimately Rick Caruso to reverse the damage. Ridley-Thomas was a dear friend of Nikias and USC, but this had gone too far. When I later asked the U.S. Attorney’s Office why they had cut loose my direct supervisor from accountability with his domineering and equally gambling personality like Flynn, they simply told me that sometimes things weren’t quite illegal. I’m not sure I buy that argument.

Even as USC has celebrated its whistleblower in that case, they’ve gotten away with the ugliest possible whistleblower retaliation against me. Seeking to emotionally damage me in a hostile termination by abusing legally protected personal files. This is a practice that I fear continues today! It’s centered around the USC’s Office of Professionalism and Ethics, led by attorney Michael Blanton, and the rebranded Office of Equity, Equal Opportunity, and Title IX (EEO-TIX), which replaced OED. I’m not even the first person to allege that they manipulate documents and investigations in this way, and yet to date, I’ve been unable to secure legal representation to hold USC to account because of its mandatory arbitration process and the low value of a tort for the intentional infliction of emotional distress, much less the use of a false pretext in termination. USC’s current General Counsel, Beong-Soo Kim, a former federal prosecutor and Kaiser Permanente executive, denied the claim out of the gate. That whistleblower chose to remain anonymous. Her lawsuit failed, and she was forced into arbitration. When will USC stop victimizing its employees for trying to do the right thing?

Far more disconcerting is the lack of transparency in regards to students. The October 2021 drug-facilitated sexual assault scandal on Fraternity Row was a massive blowout. USC President Carol Folt would accede to a “troubling delay” that in the end amounted to blaming its own bureaucracy in defense of VP of EEO-TIX Catherine Spear, who had the most direct oversight responsibility for the matter. Catherine is now being paid with taxpayer dollars to be in charge of the UC Systems Office for Civil Rights. UC President Michael V. Drake, M.D., wrote in announcing her hire that “Catherine joins a dedicated team of professionals at the University of California who are laser-focused on ensuring that our campus communities are safe working, learning, and living environments, free of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation.” I can only hope that will be the case. I fear that the same broken culture at USC, which Folt, Washington, and Spear have allowed to fester, will simply be transferred into the UC system.

USC student journalists, along with the Los Angeles Times, recently highlighted that Carol Folt had reached the end of her five-year term. The USC Board of Trustees has now “amended and extended” her contract indefinitely, and in their public statement, they declared that “The Board remains pleased with the university’s strong direction under President Folt’s leadership.” Locked out of USC, it’s hard to know if the Board is any more involved than they weren’t in 2018. Back then, they pleaded ignorance about the Tyndall matter despite being briefed by Nikias at the direction of former USC General Counsel Carol Mauch Amir on the matter, claiming to have not been given full information and details.

She, in my opinion, holds the greatest responsibility for the failure to report Tyndall to the Medical Board until the Times was after them and for trying to short-shrift the victims in the first legal settlement of $215 million that would later be topped off with an $852 million “global settlement.” Mauch Amir is back in business with a flashy webpage, billing her as someone who is “well versed in navigating the complexities of many corporate challenges by bringing the right players together and ensuring they are moving forward efficiently and effectively.”

Still, despite the loss of nearly two years of my comparatively paltry salary, I won’t relent in silence. At the end of USC’s nearly ten month investigation into whether or not I had been the victim of retaliation, USC ultimately denied that anything awful had ever happened to me at all during their hostile termination, with the blessing of Dr. Erroll Southers, Associate Senior Vice President of Safety and Risk Assurance. Southers is also the President of the Board of Police Commissioners, working hand-in-hand with Mayor Karen Bass to move forward the City of Los Angeles, and a former FBI agent. During her campaign, Bass, alongside legendary feminist attorney Gloria Allred, said: “Rick Caruso knows the truth. He must stop lying, stop the cover-up and come clean about how he sat on and shared a board and failed to protect the women from being sexually assaulted at USC.” News flash for Southers, Bass, and Allred: USC is still failing the Women of Troy by failing to engage in even minimal transparency about the outcomes of the Title IX process; and release the Tyndall report.

Los Angeles just might be a city where anything goes. As one friend told me after being terminated by USC: “it seems like you’re just figuring out Los Angeles is corrupt.” I don’t think President Carol Folt is plain corrupt, but I do think it’s time for her to step aside, much like President Biden has been widely implored to lately, and let someone else lead USC forward. Biden says that only the “Lord Almighty” could get him to stop running against Donald Trump, with pundits predicting a loss. It’s hard to say how many more losses USC has, and for what it’s worth, Carol Folt has brought a stabilizing presence to a university in turmoil even as she’s failed to reckon with its past.

I’ll never be anything less than proud of being a Trojan, even as I received a termination letter mocking me for talking too much about my master’s degree from the very institution from which I received it. The 2024 USC Culture Survey found that “82% of faculty, staff and students at USC said they’re proud to be a member of USC.” Dare I say Trojan Family?

USC has six core new corporate-style values, but truthfully, it was never the Five Traits of Trojan that were the problem, nor was it just the money, but rather an executive culture that would stop at nothing to avoid the perception of real problems. Surely, at USC and in the City of Los Angeles, brave whistleblowers should be worth protection rather than institutional betrayal.

Link: Five positive and five worrying findings from the 2024 USC Culture Survey

Link: EEO-TIX announces new leader

Link: Felicia Washington, USC’s first senior vice president of HR, to leave position

Link: Important Title IX and OCR Resolution Agreement Updates

Link: Fallen Angels: A Story of California Corruption

Link: Message on Independent Investigation and Presidential Transition

Link: Apalla U. Chopra O'Melveny & Myers Biography

Link: Steven J. Olson O’Melveny & Myers Biography

Link: Here is Rick Caruso’s Entire Deposition About the USC George Tyndall Scandal

Link: Opinion: Show USC some love, Rick Caruso

Link: Letter to colleagues - Provost Michael Quick

Link: The Campaign for USC Hits $6 Billion and Keeps on Going